Students and staff sampled cultural food from 20 different booths set up in the Aux Gym and learned about different cultures during the Mosaic of Cultures assembly on Wednesday. Take a look at how students prepared food and shared their traditions with the community, and stay tuned for more Culture Week coverage.

Chelsea Xie, Assistant News Editor: Culture Week continued with the annual cultural booths featuring ethnic cuisines, poster boards, games and cultural decorations during lunch in the Aux Gym on Wednesday. 

Heather Wang, Humans of Harker Profiler: During lunch, cultural booths offered snacks and dishes ranging from Taiwanese scallion pancakes to Mexican tres leches cake. As students sampled the foods, they learned about the unique stories and practices behind each culture. Some students also participated in traditional games like Chinese jian zi and Japanese kendama.

Patricia Burrows: I was talking to Zoe Cammer (10), who is sponsoring the Brazilian booth, and she just spent so much time preparing these little desserts to share with people. Andy Chung (12) came in super early, and he was preparing boba and scallion pancakes for the Taiwanese booth. There’s just so much desire to do a good job because they want people to enjoy and experience their culture for what they feel. So it really struck me that there’s just so many kids in there. 

Lily Peng, Assistant News Editor: Behind the scenes, student-led clubs like Slavic Student Association and National Chinese Honor Society prepared booths featuring food and crafts from their ethnic backgrounds during office hours. Each club had their own tri fold which contained details such as their history and language. 

Yinan Zhou (12): I helped organize everybody to their tasks, and I helped with prepping the script for the mosaic of culture, and also asking people to buy Panda Express for the students for the culture booth. A lot of the officers contributed in their own ways. Some of them helped redecorate the poster, some of them went to get the Panda Express, so it was a really collaborative effort.

Stellan Lindh (10): We were trying to not only pull from a certain part of the culture but also represent it completely. We were trying to do that in our booth by talking about folklore, music, food, arts, things like that. A lot of Russian food is handmade, or you have to hand make it,  so it’s hard to buy or doesn’t taste the same. A lot of those types of foods are savory, so we mostly stuck to sweet things, like cakes that are really popular and that give us a nostalgic feeling.

This traditional dress is actually not my own, but my friend gave it to me, who I’m doing the Russian booth with. You can see this pattern on a lot of traditional Russian clothes, this traditional Russian stitching. You can see that a lot in clothes and in these long tunics a lot of people wear.

Cynthia Xie, Assistant A&E/Lifestyle Editor: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Director Patricia Burrows and English teacher Christopher Hurshman opened the Mosaic of Cultures assembly with a skit demonstrating the subtleties in cultural interactions. French National Honor Society president senior Shruti Srinivasan introduced French pastry chef Lisa Allen, who spoke about her perspective on French culture. 

Student representatives dressed in cultural attire highlighted one easily recognizable aspect and one less known fact about their culture. They also shared details about food, language, interpersonal relationships and more. 

Burrows: I just looked at the progression, and this year we have 20 or 21 booths, last year we had 15 and the year before that maybe 13. In the time that we’ve been doing this, it just keeps growing, which shows that there’s a real desire to celebrate and, and celebrate through food, because I think that that’s something that people really engage with, and it’s something that you can share. We’re a global community, featuring so many different countries, so many different languages and religions around the world, so having the opportunity is really kind of beautiful.

See below for a layout of the culture booths.